Q&A with Philipp Schmickl of THEORAL

THEORAL nos 1 – 14. Photo from theoral website.



By Paul Acquaro with Philipp Schmickl


This weekend the Free Jazz Blog featured the writing of Philipp Schmickl, who has been running the publication THEORAL from his home in Nickelsdorf, Austria. To cap off his coverage of the Alternative Festival, we conducted a short Q&A by email, discussing growing up in the small town of Nickelsdorf, the influence that the Konfrontationen Festival has had, and his work running the THEORAL.



Paul: Could you elaborate a little on your background?
Nicklelsdorf is known to some as the home of the Konfrontationen
festival, but could you describe growing up in Nickelsdorf otherwise?


Philipp: Nickelsdorf lies in a rural (and poor) area at the eastern border of
Austria to Hungary. It used to be the end of “the West” until 1989. Beyond
the Iron Curtain was the territory of the Eastern Bloc. The village today
counts 1.800 inhabitants; it was a bit less when I was young. The fields,
the small forests and the river (which was straightened in the 1970s as far
as the borderline) served me as a model for the landscapes described in the
numerous novels I read as a youngster.

As a kid, my grandfather took me to see the fence that was dividing the
meadows, and he showed me the towers with the armed soldiers watching over
the plain. He said that if I crossed that fence, they would shoot me.

When the Iron Curtain fell, the Austrian government sent soldiers to patrol
the border. I was controlled from time to time on my way home from the
train station and even when they heard my tongue, I was obliged to show my
ID. I witnessed conflicts with soldiers in the restaurant of the
Jazzgalerie (where the Konfrontationen take place) and elsewhere and I
began to understand some mechanisms of prostitution.

Nickelsdorf was and is a quite usual east-Austrian village except for the
Jazzgalerie and everything that developed around it. Christof Kurzmann for
example said, that from its beginnings, the Jazzgalerie was a place were
not only music was happening (much more than in Vienna at that time) but
also international politics were debated. It was and is a window to another
world. This place influenced my growing up considerably. I got access to
music and literature and I started working/helping at the Konfrontationen
festival where seeing and talking to so many people from all over the world
who were gathering around the music, opened up my mind. There I learned
more than in the schools I was going to.


How did you get into improvised music? What were some of your formative
listening experiences?

I was around 14. On a Saturday night, some friends and I were at the
Jazzgalerie and we went downstairs to check out the concert that was going
on in the basement club. I remember standing there unable to move because I
was mesmerized by the bass but my friends tore me back upstairs. (I don’t
remember exactly and I cannot verify right now if it was a bass, it could
have been a cello as well; the drummer was Doug Hammond for sure, because
he gave us his autograph on our t-shirts after the concert).

Fascinated with the cosmopolitanism, I volunteered at the festival and started attending every club concert throughout the year. That’s how I got
more and more into the music. Simultaneously I was borrowing records and
books from Hans Falb. I could take them home where I would study them in my
room. The club concerts always took place on a Saturday, once or twice a
month. After school, already in the afternoon I went to the Jazzgalerie,
got a newspaper and a book and went downstairs to read and listen to the
soundchecks. This was a perfect world – sometimes. I was listening and
learning. I liked to observe the people arriving, greeting each other,
getting their first drink at the bar, speaking English and very often I was
surprised by the music because it was really different (not only to the
soundcheck).

Early formative listening experiences I only had in live performances. Some
that I remember right now – next time I may tell you others – I had with
Franz Hautzinger, Marilyn Crispell, Machine for Making Sense (Rik Rue,
Amanda Stewart, Jim Denley, Chris Mann, Stevie Wishart) and Tristan
Honsinger. The latter once stayed after the Konfrontationen festival for
some weeks at the Jazzgalerie. It was summer holidays and I saw him almost
every day. But he wasn’t playing, he was just there.

Very early I started travelling to other festivals in Austria and in my 20s
I regularly traveled via Marseille (where I attended the MIMI festival on
the beautiful Îles du Frioule) to Morocco where I also tried to learn about
music. Later I went to many other festivals in Europe, Lebanon, Mexico and
my understanding of the scene grew more and more. I found the social and
political always inseparable from the music.




Aside from improvised music, what other genres of music, and art
generally, interest you?

I don’t care so much about the genre. It’s more about the attitude that
comes through in the music. I think you very often can discern if the
decision why the music is made is rather based on artistic questions or
rather on questions of career. Sometimes the latter can be really good and
the former really boring, but usually the targeting of artistic questions
is more interesting to me (or the approach of “art-prière” put forward by
the German/Mexican artist Mathias Goeritz).

I listen to Ancient music as well as to Mexican popular music as well as to
the Viennese school around Arnold Schönberg as well as to Samba and
Maracutú, etc, etc.

I love reading novels and going to the cinema. It is a pity, that many good
films use disturbing or just bad sound and music, I have to say. I would
love to see more dance pieces but the dance scene I feel a little bit
difficult to access.




Can you tell us a little bit about THEORAL, for example, when did you
start it and what was your inspiration?




What is your approach to putting together an edition of 
THEORAL? What
inspires, or suggests themes?

The first issue of THEORAL came out on April 1, 2011. Two years earlier, I
published together with Hans Falb from the Jazzgalerie Nickelsdorf the book

tell no lies claim no easy victories / L’improvisation ne s’improvise
pas

for the 30th anniversary of the Konfrontationen. For this I conducted two interviews with Joëlle Léandre, which taught me a lot about the strength
of the spoken word. At the same time I was studying oral history as a
methodology in anthropology. In 2010, I graduated in socio-cultural
anthropology and as I could not find any interesting jobs – in fact, any job
– so I decided to do my own thing. I contacted my accomplice Karin
Weinhandl and ever since she’s been in charge of layout and illustration.

The first issue included interviews with Marco Eneidi and my most important
teacher at university, Andre Gingrich. We had no model for THEORAL, just a
subtitle: oral music histories and interesting interviews. It was an
inexperienced product of what we thought is good. Publishing the first
issue I already had the next ones in mind. I thought, I may make a living
out of it but quite soon I realized that this was not going to happen. So I
got jobs in galleries and restaurants to secure a living and continued to
publish one or two books a year without compromising.

The basic idea was to ask artists the questions that I posed myself about
how I wanted to live my life. And then, of course, I investigated the
mechanisms of how the music comes to acoustic life and where inspirations
come from and how decisions are made. I was never interested in talking
about the latest album or tour and if, then only as a means to explain
larger concepts like attitudes, techniques, structures, politics, etc. One
of the reasons why we published conversations with musicians (and other
artists) from all over the world, is that I was searching for universals in
personal expression. What is the thread made of that sews together people
who are trying to live their life in a creative way – if there is one.

The guiding methodology is to consider the interview – the conversation –
as an improvised concert. Each speaker has his/her own agenda, his/her own
questions, feelings and experiences, etc. I mostly rely on my knowledge,
spontaneity and instinct (in short: intuition) in order to ask the “right”
questions at the “right” time. Now and then I prepare one or two special
questions in advance.

Throughout some years I recorded many interviews, a lot of them are not
published. So when I think of putting together a new edition, I either
combine a new interview with one of the already recorded ones, or I have a
certain idea about what I want to do and I start from scratch. Maybe I
should target a publication with a collection of (parts of) older
interviews as well – I have a lot in French and Spanish as well but this is
another story. Who I choose depends on personal taste and timing. There are
so many who I did not ask yet.




The Oral has had 15 editions, are there any issues that you recall
something special about?

The new edition is always my favorite.

If I look at all the issues, each one has its color, its memories of
recording, transcribing and editing, of discussing the illustrations with
Karin, a release party with certain concerts, my personal memories are tied
to the books, almost into the colors of the covers.




As I understand it, your are shifting your focus a bit, what are your
plans, what is the future of 
THEORAL?

It was crucial to write the article On Being A Medium. Bright gatekeeping in a dark era for THEORAL NO. 14. I tried to find as many different facets of “the medium” as I could
and then began to elaborate on each aspect. (It may be considered as the
beginning of a larger work). This subsequently led to the change of the
THEORAL subtitle into: bright medium for uncynical voices.

Over the last nine years, we have been a medium in the brightest sense. We
have generated a lot of honest material. I think, it is perfectly possible
to write an

Aesthetics of Improvisation under contemporary socio-political
conditions

based on what we have published in 15 editions on over 1,200 pages.

Recently I listened to a radio show focusing on the new opera Orlando of Olga Neuwirth that had its première at the opera house
in Vienna. And what the great composer had to say about music did not
differ much and was sometimes even less interesting as what the artists
have said in THEORAL. “Everything” cannot be said and we would never aspire
to that; but what has been said in THEORAL, covers a wide range of what is
important in music. It may be time for taking a break and evaluation.

Although I already have an idea for THEORAL NO. 16, I think, it’s time to
shift the focus to writing. And as the economic censor is growing its
scissors day by day, I have been looking for an ally in the next project. I
found the department for jazz and popular music studies at the art
university in Graz, Austria, where I am going to present my PhD project
very soon, hoping to be finally accepted. The doctorate will be a monograph
on the Jazzgalerie Nickelsdorf and the Konfrontationen festival at the
border. I am thankful for indications where to obtain stipends for this
kind of enterprise.

THEORAL no. 15, featuring Didi Kern und Philipp Quehenberger will be released on Feb 7th. The text is in German and  contains a CD. [more here]

Previous versions of THEORAL are also available, no. 14 featured Tristan Honsiger and Joel Grip. [read more]